Topsail Sound, NC

Today's goal is to do about 35 miles to get to Topsail Sound, a wide, open salt marsh area with some deep water behind a barrier island lined with vacation homes. According to our guide, there is a well marked, but shallow in spots, channel in -- and not recommended for boats drawing more than 5 feet -- making it (barely) doable for us.

The Intercoastal has a 10 miles stretch cutting right through Camp Lejeune, a huge (256 square miles!) training base for the Marines -- typically 50,000 marines are stationed there. Not only does the Intercoastal cut through the base, it cuts through one of its firing ranges -- thankfully, the Marines close the waterway whenever they are firing across it. There is even a phone number you can call to find out whether they will be firing today -- we checked it and hurrah, no target practice today.

On the way to camp Lejeune -- there is no shortage of big, lovely homes along the Intercoastal

Loved gnarly tree

Well, almost -- while the Marines wouldn't be closing the Intercoastal for target practice, there are lots of other firing ranges on the base (54 according to one source), some of which are pretty close to the waterway. We could hear and feel the concussions from explosions from a few miles out; as we got closer to the base, they got louder (and closer!). One, in particular, landed behind a hill perhaps a quarter of a mile from our position -- the noise was "thunderclap" sharp and loud, the concussion tangible and we could see the smoke rising over the hilltop -- sure made me wonder whether they've ever had any mishaps that involved passing boats :-)

Marines patrolling the Intercoastal in Lejeune

Birds ignoring the Danger signs in Lejeune

Ya gotta love it -- water skiing down the Intercoastal in Lejeune

In addition to dealing with firing ranges, today's itinerary requires us to transit two swing bridges -- remnants of a bridge building boom in the early 20th century, these bridges are old, slow and because they typically connect densely populated barrier islands with the mainland, they open infrequently -- in one case today, just once and hour. Because the Intercoastal has lots of unpredictable currents, it's hard to "time" yourself to arrive at exactly the right time -- so basically, it's "bridge roulette" as to whether you get to wait or not. As it turned out, we only had to wait a few minutes for the first bridge, but the second, cost us almost a full hour of "waiting", particularly frustrating because it was close to the end of our trip.

A typical swing bridge -- it rotates out of the way so you can drive through

On the bright side, we did see dolphins gracefully feeding themselves a few times along the way  -- we were now well below Cape Hatteras, which is kind of a "Mason Dixon" line for fish -- north of the cape is predominantly Northern fish species, the porpoise being among them; south of the cape is predominantly Southern fish species -- so we were seeing dolphins (porpoises have triangular fins, dolphins curved, like "Flipper").

Dolphins feeding

This blue heron followed us for a while

The trip down was otherwise uneventful until we got to the 1.5 mile long channel to get into Topsail Sound -- as promised, it was well marked but shallow in spots -- there were two spots where we bumped on the way in and one other where I should "zigged" but instead "zagged" and we briefly ran aground. We were coming in just before dead low, so while a bit harrowing, the challenge wasn't a surprise.

Having said that, the anchorage itself was worth it -- on one side of the boat was nothing but an endless expanse of salt marsh full of bird-life, on the other, nice homes on a barrier Island. The water was clear (no tannin here), so we got in for a swim soon after setting our hook -- a little piece of heaven.

Parks his shrimp boat behind his barrier island home